nd
earnestly conjured him to claim her as a lawful spouse, to whom he had
been secretly betrothed. These indecent advances were received, however,
with coldness and disdain; and the king of the Huns continued to
multiply the number of his wives, till his love was awakened by the
more forcible passions of ambition and avarice. The invasion of Gaul
was preceded, and justified, by a formal demand of the princess Honoria,
with a just and equal share of the Imperial patrimony. His predecessors,
the ancient Tanjous, had often addressed, in the same hostile and
peremptory manner, the daughters of China; and the pretensions of Attila
were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A firm, but temperate,
refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right of female
succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the recent
examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied; and the
indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her
Scythian lover. [29] On the discovery of her connection with the king
of the Huns, the guilty princess had been sent away, as an object of
horror, from Constantinople to Italy: her life was spared; but the
ceremony of her marriage was performed with some obscure and nominal
husband, before she was immured in a perpetual prison, to bewail those
crimes and misfortunes, which Honoria might have escaped, had she not
been born the daughter of an emperor. [30]

[Footnote 28: A medal is still extant, which exhibits the pleasing
countenance of Honoria, with the title of Augusta; and on the reverse,
the improper legend of Salus Reipublicoe round the monogram of Christ.
See Ducange, Famil. Byzantin. p. 67, 73.]

[Footnote 29: See Priscus, p, 39, 40. It might be fairly alleged, that
if females could succeed to the throne, Valentinian himself, who had
married the daughter and heiress of the younger Theodosius, would have
asserted her right to the Eastern empire.]

[Footnote 30: The adventures of Honoria are imperfectly related by
Jornandes, de Successione Regn. c. 97, and de Reb. Get. c. 42, p. 674;
and in the Chronicles of Prosper and Marcellinus; but they cannot be
made consistent, or probable, unless we separate, by an interval of time
and place, her intrigue with Eugenius, and her invitation of Attila.]

A native of Gaul, and a contemporary, the learned and eloquent Sidonius,
who was afterwards bishop of Clermont, had made a promise to one of his
friends, that he